CVG Airport and Columbia University partner through new Airports AI Alliance Open Innovation Programme
The Airports AI Alliance (AAA) has launched its Open Innovation Programme, a new initiative designed to help airports accelerate innovation by connecting operational challenges with expertise from industry, academia and technology partners.
The programme’s first collaboration brings together Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG), Columbia University’s Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) and INRIX to explore how digital twin technologies can support airport planning and operations. The partners will investigate how digital mapping and transport intelligence can provide greater visibility into airport infrastructure, passenger and vehicle movements to support more informed operational planning and decision-making.
Tara Mulrooney, Director of Innovation (North America), Airports AI Alliance
The Open Innovation Programme provides a structured framework for airports to collaborate with industry and academia on shared operational challenges. Depending on the needs of each project, the Alliance can support challenge definition, partner identification and collaboration through to pilot development, while capturing and sharing practical lessons with its global membership. Built around challenge-based innovation principles, the programme aims to accelerate innovation, reduce the cost and risk of evaluating emerging technologies, and create practical, scalable solutions that can be shared across the wider airport community.
“The Open Innovation Programme is designed to help airports accelerate innovation by giving them access to expertise they may not have within their own organizations,” said Tara Mulrooney, Director of Innovation (North America) for the Airports AI Alliance and former CTO & VP Technology for Edmonton International Airport. “By bringing together airports, industry and academia around shared challenges, we can reduce the time from concept to pilot while creating solutions that can be shared across the global airport community.”
Brian Cobb, Chief Innovation Officer, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport
“For CVG, this is about pairing decades of industry-leading knowledge with emergent expertise from our Columbia colleagues,” said Brian Cobb, Chief Innovation Officer at CVG. “Columbia’s Center for Smart Streetscapes brings independent research rigor, and INRIX brings the data and mapping intelligence. This combination allows us to build a living, real-time model of how people, vehicles, and infrastructure actually move through CVG. This digital twin development gives us the visibility to help get ahead of problems and protect the resiliency of our community.”
The CVG project marks the first initiative under the Airports AI Alliance’s Open Innovation Programme, with additional collaborations already being explored across areas including operational efficiency, passenger experience, AI deployment and airport infrastructure. As projects progress, the Alliance will share outcomes and practical insights with members to help accelerate innovation across the wider airport community.